Basara Tojo is just your average high school student… he just wants to go to school and take care of his family. A family that has now been expanded as his father – seemingly randomly – adopts two girls around his age to be his little sisters. This is where our show starts… his father has just informed him of his new family members, and they meet each other by accident in the most unflattering way possible: in the bathroom.

As you might have guessed, this is just another slice of life show as he has to get to know his two new sisters: Mio Naruse and Maria Naruse. Mio immediately begins to hate him for their first meeting, but Maria is a bit of a pervert and starts trying to get him into untoward situations for her own amusement. Yep, just another slice of life show… or is it?

Fantasy Switcheroo

Of course, that’s not at all the case. The last few minutes of the first episode completely upend every expectation it sets. In reality, this is a fantasy harem anime like so many others. This show uses the tired premise that the legends of demons, heroes, etc. are all based in reality… in specific, there is a ‘Hero Clan’ whose members have been responsible for stopping demons from having a huge impact on the real world. The Naruse sisters are both demons, Mio the daughter of the former demon lord and Maria her protector, while Tojo and his father are exiled members of the Hero clan.

After a rocky start, Tojo’s father convinces him to treat his new sisters as members of the family, and he takes it on himself to protect Mio. You see, she hasn’t yet come into her inherited power so she’s got a giant target painted on her. Over the course of the season you see the story of the Basara family (including Mio and Maria) against the world become a focus. It’s not entirely original, but it works fairly well to push matters forward. And it offers a good chance for the friendships between the various characters to develop.

The characters in this anime are fun to watch, but incredibly stereotypical. Naïve, unwilling harem ‘king’, the tsundere, the pervert (although with a slight logical twist since Maria is actually a succubus), etc. Nothing we haven’t seen before, but they’re still fun to watch. The show does a fairly good job of building rivalries and friendships among these key characters, and of using these to create interesting situations to explore. Some of the time, anyways…

Not Safe For… Anywhere

The rest of the time they just fall into what is basically censored hentai. This isn’t just ‘possibly mature situations’ or ‘minor nudity’… it’s full on hentai, just with little chibi images covering the relevant parts. It is really disturbing. And it really takes away from what could’ve been an interesting story.

These types of scenes come up so frequently that I’m almost tempted to think that this was actually originally made as a hentai show, but they didn’t think it’d sell enough so they censored it to make it able to be aired in more places… it even fuels several story points. You see, in order to help Tojo protect Mio, they establish a magical bond between them… and that could be a fairly simple point, but since Maria is the one to perform the ritual, it becomes some sort of creepy pleasure bond.

Final Thoughts

For a fantasy action anime, there’s not a lot to say about the action. It’s what you’d expect. The protagonist is your typical magical swordsman wielding a legendary weapon, Mio’s demonic powers manifest in fire, Maria’s a brawler, etc… there’s really nothing to point out as being special. Our protagonist even has a hidden superpower that he can’t quite control which led to a childhood trauma. That isn’t to say its bad, there are some interesting fight scenes, but it isn’t particularly noteworthy.

Also not worth noting is the anime’s presentation. The animation style is pretty ordinary, the visuals are nothing spectacular, and the soundtrack is quite mediocre. Even the characters aren’t particularly well animated or detailed.

Overall

There are glimmers of hope within this show. Some of the relationships and interactions are quite good, there are a few surprising story twists, and despite being somewhat predictable the elements were fairly well executed at a few key points. There were two big problems… first, there wasn’t anything unique – no big special hooks to make it stand out. Secondly, and far more important, they fall far too often into this creepy pseudo-hentai which is just not entertaining – censored or otherwise. The show falls flat because of these two problems, but I can’t deny that I had fun watching it.

I apologize for the delay in this review as well as for the lack of images. We’ve had to deal with some computer issues which delayed us in getting this ready. Things should be back to normal soon. Thank you!